Abstract
This paper gives an account of participial clauses in Agul (Lezgic, Nakh-Daghestanian), based on a sample of 858 headed noun-modifying clauses taken from two text corpora, one spoken and one written. Noun-modifying clauses in Agul do not show syntactic restrictions on what can be relativized, and hence they instantiate the type known as GNMCCs, or general noun-modifying clause constructions. As the text counts show, intransitive verbs are more frequent than transitives and experiencer verbs in participial clauses, and among intransitive verbs, locative statives with the roots ‘be’ and ‘stay, remain’ account for half of all the uses. The asymmetry between the different relativization targets is also significant. Among the core arguments, the intransitive subject (S) is the most frequent target, patient (P) occupies second place, and agent (A) is comparatively rare. The preference of S and, in general, of S and P over A also holds true for most other Nakh-Daghestanian languages for which comparable counts are available. At the same time, Agul stands apart from the other languages by its high ratio of non-core relativization which accounts for 42% of all participial clauses. Addressee, arguments and adjuncts encoded with a locative case, as well as more general place and time relativizations show especially high frequency, outnumbering such arguments as experiencers, recipients, and predicative and adnominal possessors. Possible reasons for the high ratio of non-argument relativization are discussed in the paper.
Acknowledgments
Work on this paper was financially supported by the Russian Science Foundation grant no. 18-78-10128. My thanks are due to Solmaz Merdanova and Salminat Gasanova for their judgments as native speakers, to Michael Daniel, Yury Lander and Johanna Nichols for discussing various aspects of relativization, and to Paul Phelan for the help with the English of the paper.
Abbreviations
- abs
absolutive
- add
additive
- adv
adverb
- ag
agent noun
- aor
aorist
- apud
‘near’ localization
- comit
comitative
- cont
‘in contact’ localization
- cop
copula
- cvb
converb
- dat
dative
- demg/demm/demt
demonstrative (g-, m-, t-series)
- elat
elative
- emp
emphatic
- erg
ergative
- gap
gap
- gen
genitive
- hab
habitual
- imp
imperative
- in
‘inside’ localization
- incl
inclusive
- inf
infinitive
- inter
‘between’/‘in a mass’ localization
- ipf
imperfective
- juss
jussive
- lat
lative
- loc
locative
- neg
negation
- nmlz
nominalizer
- opt
optative
- ord
ordinal
- pf
perfective
- pl
plural
- post
‘behind’ localization
- prf
perfect/resultative
- prs
present
- pst
past
- pt
participle
- ptcl
particle
- re
repetitive
- rsn
reason
- sg
singular
- sub
‘under’ localization
- super
‘on, above’ localization
- temp
temporal converb
- tmr
temporal form of nouns
- up
‘upwards’ direction
- voc
vocative
Aspectual stems of verbs and oblique stems of nouns are separated by dots. Unmarked values are given in round brackets; by default, singular number and absolutive case in nouns are left without labels. Bound parts of complex verbs are given in angle brackets.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- ɸ-agreement within Construct State in Jordanian Arabic
- Complex predicates and space in Dâw (Naduhup language, AM)
- What are and what aren’t complex nominal expressions in flexible word order languages
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- ɸ-agreement within Construct State in Jordanian Arabic
- Complex predicates and space in Dâw (Naduhup language, AM)
- What are and what aren’t complex nominal expressions in flexible word order languages
- Non-canonical inverse in Circassian languages
- Relative clauses in Agul from a corpus-based perspective